The Painted Button Quail, Turnix varia, is a native quail of the drier eucalypt forests of eastern and southern Australia. Whilst they are widespread, they are quite uncommon, and their camouflage plumage makes actually seeing them in the bush a rare treat.

Our first encounter with them was fifteen years ago, whilst sound recording for one of our early nature albums; ‘A Morning in the Australian Bush’. In the Capertee Valley of NSW I recorded what I thought to be a pigeon, giving a series of resonant booming calls from low bushes. We didn’t actually see the bird, but it sounded so like the Common Bronzewing pigeon, that it never occurred to me to question. It was only a year later, after we had completed and published this album, that a naturalist friend confirmed that what we’d recorded was actually a Painted Button Quail.

Here is that recording of the Quail, as heard on the album. (The accelerating call, gradually rising in pitch, is diagnostic. Also to be heard in this sample is the clear, descending whistle of a Horsfield’s Bronze Cuckoo)

A few years later we bought a bush block and built our home in central Victoria. Imagine our delight to discover that we had these delicate little birds resident in the bushland around us. Not only in the forest, but sheltering by our back door, trotting past our office window, or taking a short cut through our car port!

It was our first occasion to really observe them, and what beautiful little creatures they are!

A female ‘PBQ’

Usually seen in pairs, they are quick and nervous in their movements, darting off or taking wing at the slightest disturbance – which is very wise for a small ground-dwelling bird! In Australia we have several introduced predators that these quail have had to learn to live with; foxes and cats being the most threatening. Add to that the distressing fact that over the years we have found almost as many dead quail by the side of rural roads as we’ve ever seen alive, and we have come to feel these birds are hanging onto existence by sheer tenacity.

For several years we enjoyed seeing them around our home and bush, and then we stopped seeing them at all. We put this down to either predation or drought. For years now, south-east Australia has been in the grip of one of its worst droughts on record. The unprecedented bush fires in Victoria have made headlines around the world, the bush is dry and colourless, and urban water storages are at all-time lows. Not seeing our lovely quail was just another depressing sign.

But two months ago, they reappeared! We first noticed them in a disused garden patch near the house, and most mornings since we can see them among the dried grasses that have taken over the old garden beds.

Male Painted Button Quail at a nesting scrape

This morning I spent some time quietly watching them feeding and scuffling around. They have a delightful habit of digging little nesting scrapes in soft earth, and one can see where they have been by the lunar landscape of delicate depressions they create. They are so animated, like little feathery balls on yellow legs. So quick and restless are they that getting a photo without blur is not easy! At one point I must have moved slightly, and they suddenly scampered off into the undergrowth. In doing so they slick their feathers down, no longer plump little feather balls, they run head outstretched like arrows to safety.

So a plump quail is a happy quail. Hooray for tenacity!

The nature sound album ‘A Morning in the Australian Bush’ features a beautiful diversity of Australian birdsong, and is available on CD or by digital download from our website: www.listeningearth.com